LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
STATE BENEVOLENCE.
LTO TUN ICDITOR Or TON SPn(TATUa."1
SIR,—The good Archbishop of Canterbury, if he is rightly reported, upholds the Pension Bill as a measure of national benevolence likely to have salutary effect on national character. But private benevolence, which has greatly increased during my lifetime, can hardly fail to be lessened; and is it not rather private benevolence, with its kind look and words of sympathy, that, though personal in its agencies, is national in its aggregate effect ? Private benevolence, more- over, distinguishes ; the pension-list does not. I have seen only an extract from the Archbishop's speech, but in that nothing was said about the political danger, of which we have a warning in the case of the military pension-list of the United States. There appears, not in the Archbishop's speech, but in some other clerical speeches or writings, a tendency to substitute a social and economical for the religious question, and to find an ally in Socialism. This surely is not a hopeful policy. Most Socialists probably are freethinkers. The moral ideal of Christianity remains to us, whatever criticism may do with the Bible, and may hold Christendom together. But nothing can relieve the Church from the necessity of confronting the question whether the Bible is the Word of
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